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 The terminated officer, Shaun Landau, had testified for the
prosecution during the trial of his partner, Peter Liang, who was
convicted of manslaughter and official misconduct in Brooklyn on
Thursday.
Liang fired his gun in a darkened public housing stairwell on Nov.
20, 2014 as the two officers began a so-called "vertical patrol."
The bullet ricocheted off a wall and struck Akai Gurley, 28, who had
been walking one floor below with his girlfriend.
Neither officer offered medical assistance to Gurley once they
realized he had been hit by the shot. Both testified that they felt
unqualified to do so because of poor CPR training at the police
academy.
 Landau avoided criminal charges by agreeing to testify under an
immunity agreement. The police department said he had been fired at
the discretion of Commissioner Bill Bratton.
His termination came hours after the Gurley family released a
statement calling for his dismissal. Liang was fired immediately
after the jury's verdict on Thursday.
The shooting inflamed nationwide tensions over the use of police
force against minorities, following a string of high-profile
incidents in which officers killed unarmed black men.
Liang, who is Chinese-American, was not accused of deliberately
killing Gurley.
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At trial, he said he was startled by an unidentified sound as he
entered the stairwell with his gun drawn, causing his finger to slip
onto the trigger and fire. He tearfully described his horror when he
realized minutes later that Gurley had been hit.
But prosecutors accused him of deliberately firing toward the sound
and ignoring the fact that only another person could have made such
a noise. They also said he acted recklessly in drawing his weapon in
the first place.
Liang faces up to 15 years in prison at his sentencing in April.
(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by Tom Brown)
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